Introduction

VICNET is a joint project of RMIT Libraries and the State Library of
Victoria. The project has been established by a grant from the Community
Support Fund, which is administered by the Victorian State Government
Department of Arts, Sport and Tourism. The project will be officially
launched late April 1995.

VICNET has two aims;

1 To promote equitable access to the Internet for all Victorians, and
2 To mount Victorian information on the Internet.

To achieve these aims we are pursuing a number of complementary strategies as
follows;

1 Develop a network of suburban and regional nodes throughout Victoria,
to provide cheap dial-up access.
2 Install free public access terminals in public libraries throughout
Victoria,
3 Promote the establishment of community information servers, and
4 Actively seek Victorian information resources and find ways to mount
them on the Internet.

Funding

At present, as well as VICNET's link to the Internet through AARNet, ISDN
links have been established to Box Hill-Doncaster Regional Library, Eastern
Regional Libraries and the North East Telecentre at Wangaratta. We are in the
process of linking up the Braille and Talking Book Library and the RVIB
Talking Book Library; and a variety of proposals are in train for funding to
connect up a range of other libraries across the State.

In most cases the funding for the library connections comes from a combination
of existing and proposed Victorian Libraries Board grants and local Public
Library budgets, plus the original VICNET establishment grant (during the
pilot period).

As an example, the Box Hill-Doncaster Regional Library Authority in
Melbourne's Eastern suburbs had a grant to establish a CivicNet for their area
called the Whitehorse Electronic Village and they were able to redirect some
of the funds to establishing a link through VICNET.

The North East Telecentre (NET), on the other hand, is one of a series of
community computing centres established with Federal Government funding around
regional Australia, rather than a library service. VICNET has provided
funding to establish NET as a regional node in order to explore and
demonstrate a funding model which doesn't rely (entirely) on government
funding. The idea is that VICNET and NET explore ways in which services
through the node could be sold to produce revenue which can be used to offset
the cost of providing the equipment and communications.

The VICNET objectives in this arrangement simply relate back to our aims.
We want a link to the local public library (paid for on a cost recovery
basis), we want a say in the individual charges for dial-in access
(commercial but reasonable) and we want to establish a community information
server with a link on to the VICNET Web server.

There are other models. We are actively pursuing a proposal where a TAFE
college funds part of the cost in exchange for Internet access, and another
where a commercial organisation with an existing network makes it available
for VICNET use in exchange for Internet access and the right to offset some of
its costs by running regional nodes. There are undoubtedly many variations on
these themes, but we have already discovered some approaches which don't seem
as though they are going to be very productive despite appearing to be an
obvious solution. We believe, for example, that various State Government
Departments and instrumentalities run about thirty different networks to
various areas around Victoria and yet those that we have approached, while
positive about VICNET, are generally cautious about making any commitment to
sharing of communications facilities. There are probably very sound reasons
for this; they are private networks designed for specific purposes and the
security and traffic implications of operating across a public Internet
connected network are real enough.

It may make more sense for VICNET to adopt an approach where it develops a
State sponsored, but self-funding public network and let Government
Departments decide for themselves what traffic they could reasonably send via
a shared network and what they need to restrict to private networks.

We don't know what the best model is, or even if there is a best model. It
may be that a variety of different approaches will be used, but it does seem
likely that the great reservoir of goodwill and enthusiasm we have uncovered
will lead us to find ways to keep the project healthy and growing.

To connect remote nodes we are currently establishing mainly ISDN links,
using JTEC terminal adapters, Telebit Netblazer remote access routers and
Dataplex AccessPoint rack modems. This has worked very well so far and we
have had terrific support from Dataplex, but it is unclear what will happen as
the network gets more complex and the traffic increases. We have a growing
need for Network Engineering expertise.

Installing free public access terminals in public libraries throughout
Victoria

Once we had the central site at the State Library set up, all public
library services in the State (at least all we could identify; they were in a
state of flux due to Council amalgamations) were invited to become VICNET
pilot users. Some took up the offer and, apart from those already mentioned,
most elected to try dial-in on a reserved line first, which was only sensible
given the cost involved in a permanent link. A number of these libraries are
now regularly dialling while staff get used to using the Internet prior to
putting out terminals for the public.

The first library to go live with a public access terminal was the
Mornington Peninsula Regional Library Service, in the last week of March. The
other participating libraries are gearing up, and by the time of the
Conference we expect that most of the pilot libraries will have put their
terminals out in the public areas. (There are a host of issues surrounding
this aspect of the venture, but that is another paper.)

Our intention is that all public library services will have a permanent
link to the Internet (through VICNET or some other path; we don't care which)
within two years, but many will be connected sooner than that. A number of
library services have already started to move in this direction by applying
for grants for funding.

At the moment, the pilot users have been using a package of
shareware/freeware/alpha and beta test versions (for Windows and Mac) which
has been packaged to be (relatively) simple to install. For the public
terminals, we are probably going to have to do some work on producing a custom
software environment, but this has yet to happen.

Promoting the establishment of community information servers

There seems to be enthusiasm all over Victoria for the concept of mounting
information about local communities on the Internet.

Our belief is that community information servers are like virtual public
libraries; Libraries are obviously information resources for their
communities, but they are also a recreational resource, an education centre
and a community meeting place. A well set up server can provide virtual
analogues of those functions through the Web supplemented by mail, news
groups, and other Internet services.
The library is an established focus for a local community. Many groups meet
there, they have heavily used bulletin boards where local people and groups
put up information, they provide many services to the local community. VICNET
and the local libraries aim to have public access terminals logged into
VICNETs web server defaulting to a local home page filled with local
information provided by the community. VICNET will be setting up these
services on its own server and will encourage local communities to do the
same. The VICNET server at the State Library runs on a Sun SPARCstation 20
running Solaris 2.3. We use the CERN Web Server.

The web offers a huge opportunity for local communities and community groups.
These can range from the local Citizens Advice Bureau and Neighbourhood
Houses, to ethnic groups, elderly resource centers, special interest groups
and so on. These groups have a wealth of information they regularly make
available to the community via help lines, leaflets, newsletters and a myriad
of other ways. These publications and services are great local information for
the local community. This information can be put up on a web site like VICNET
and made available through local libraries and other free public access
terminals to the communities these groups serve.

It is our experience that many community groups can not afford Internet
connections - let alone reasonable computer equipment. Many are not aware of
the possibilities that stem from publishing their information on the Web. For
a variety of reasons, many currently feel that they lack the skills to publish
their information on the web.

We have been experimenting with a number of approaches to overcome these
problems. Using a community directory VICNET has contacted a number of
community groups and encouraged them to provide literature for conversion to
hypertext markup language (HTML) to be put up on VICNET. The amount of
information which we can publish for community groups is limited, and there
are some information management problems which the "let us do it for you"
approach brings in its wake. Issues of currency, accuracy, and ownership of
the undertaking have each manifested themselves with our efforts to date.
Simply keeping what we have got tidy could easily begin to consume a large
percentage of our available energy.

Our experience suggests that it is preferrable to outsource the effort of
conversion and maintenance, either onto the groups concerned or onto willing
volunteers who will "adopt" a group or groups.
To get groups and individuals creating their own html, we have been running
some introduction to html sessions and have beenexperimenting with the
provision of "Publishing Packs" to groups which include a very simple
introductory exercise plus some good sample html documents plus utilities and
a browser.
The FreeNet movement in North America offers a number of examples which
incorporate a large input from a volunteer group The Chebucto FreeNet of
Canada has a very structured and well organised Information
Providers/Volunteer's group. Chebucto
FreeNet[href 1] works very closely with the community. Their original
information providers have become their volunteers. Their goal is:

"to supply the Chebucto FreeNet with Information Providers significant
to our community and help them in their efforts to produce up-to-date and
relevant information."

VICNET has followed the example, and has established a fledgling but active
Friends of VICNET[href
2] group. At the first meeting a wide cross section of people turned up,
including a representative from the Disability Resource Centre, a genealogist
who has already had three jobs as a result of writing a piece for our
newsletter, an author who works with the Victorian Writers Centre, two
secondary school teachers, an aerospace industry employee, a medical
software developer, and as we later found out, a notorious hacker.

The growing number of high quality documents created either by the groups
themselves or by our volunteers Community pages[HREF 3]
and in
the Clubs, societies and
Associations pages[HREF 4] suggest that these strategies are indeed
paying off.
We like to think that VICNET is a vibrant and interesting site because it is
harnessing the creativity and energy of wide range of people.
We hope in the near future that more groups can work togther and share
resources enabling anybody in the local community time to work on a computer
preparing their HTML pages if they do not have access to their own computer.
Again the library is ideally placed for sharing of this kind and we envisage
that this will help to generate a sense of community. A similar venture in
North America noted that the libraries which were providing network access
took on a new importance within their communities, being "increasingly seen as
a community resource rather than just a place for fiction and arts and crafts
books."(McClure et al 1994)

Empowering the community

The potential for this community based publishing is far reaching. The
world wide web offers the chance for the one-way information flow from the
established media to be challenged by a wide diversity of other groups and we
can see this with the emergence of web sites for Greenpeace, Friends of the
Earth and so on. It is our experience that once groups gain a little skill in
the use of HTML they can prepare equally striking pages of information as the
big media sites. With the Web being such an open network it enables even the
smallest organization running its own web site to compete on an equal footing
with the large media organisations. This compares favourably with the
traditional small group broadcast publishing methods, practices like handing
out newsletters at on street corners, or at festivals and markets. Through the
web the small group can reach an expanding user base all over the world with
professional and striking web pages backed up with quality content.

VICNET represents an interesting case study in this regard, as, together with
a rapidly expanding and already quite extensive collection of community
information we currently host the first tentative experiment in Web publishing
byThe AGE[HREF 5],
Melbourne's major daily newspaper. The arrival of The Age has more than
doubled the amount of traffic on our server. The Age pages dominate the VICNET top
twenty[HREF 6] pages retrieved each
week listing. As might be expected, the large media organisations will
continue to attract large audiences on the network. Control of mass
distribution channels is not the only advantage of the large media
organisations. They also have an identifiable "brand name" which attracts the
web browsing audience, and they have the resources to gather and organise
content which the small group will find difficult to match. We leave it to
the reader to estimate how The Age pages compare to the VICNET pages in terms
of content, and to draw his or her conclusions from the usage patterns.
There are extensive discussions of the promise and the pitfalls of the net for
community empowerment, and it is clear that the networked utopia has some way
to go. (Wark 1994,Rheingold 1994)

Our experience certainly suggests that there are a significant number of
Victorians who are eager to adopt this communications media to create their
own vision of areas of experience about which they feel passionate, and that
there is a growing audience for the material created.
The eagerness with which some of Australia's
telecottages and telecentres[HREF 7] have
taken to the network, and the entrepreneurial energy they are displaying in
offering network related services to their local communities suggests that the
the Web offers considerable potential for economic empowerment as well.

Actively seeking Victorian information resources and finding ways to mount
them on the Internet

From a technical point of view, most of what VICNET is doing at the moment is
standard Web practice, however one of the challenges will be to provide
interfaces to some of the many databases of public interest produced by
community groups, local councils and by the Victorian Government. The State
Library itself maintains a number of databases of interest, the most
spectacular of which is Pictoria[HREF 8], a
database of
(currently) 107,000 historical images. This held on a Windows NT server and
accessible through public workstations within the State Library. We aim to
make it available via the Web. Plans are in hand to provide access to the
Victorian Government Publications database, the Victorian Parliament Hansard
and the Victorian Law Printer database.

We are creating a rich virtual information environment, with the hope that we
gain the critical mass to begin attracting still more information. As well as
community information, we are actively working with Local Government and with
Victorian State Government agencies to encourage them to publish information
and to establish a presence on the Internet to enable communication between
government and constituency.

There are a number of challenging issues which are emerging as our site grows
and as it gains popularity. What are the limitations on the sorts of
information we will publish? Should we let the school boy entrepreneur who
emailed me recently advertise his email order condom business? What standards
should we impose on documents before we publish them? To what extent should we
fix documents up - or should we let them stew in their own typos and
go-nowhere links? Can we put links into someone else's document without
asking them? What are the best ways to organize our growing data collection?

Conclusion

By luck or good management, VICNET seems to have anticipated some of the key
recommendations of the Federal Goverment's Broadband experts group(Final
Report 1995), and the Creative Nation statement:

In line with its access and equity objectives, the Goverment will ensure the
maximum public access to the information services becoming available. The
Government is aware of the potential of networked information services to
improve the quality of life both in cities and in remote areas of Australia.
It is clear that it will be some years before all Australian homes have the
interactive facilites needed to receive many electronic services. The
Government will work with the States to form local access points to enable
Australians to participate fully in open learning opportunities, government
services, small business support, electronic communications, community
networks and other opportunities for personal development. In particular, the
1,400 public library service points throughout Australia provide a major
opportunity for linking communities to network services, such as those
available through the Internet. The Government will work with the States to
deliver an effective program of community access. Creative Nation,
1994[HREF 9]